Salman Rushdie is one of the world’s most acclaimed, award-winning contemporary authors. Translated into over forty languages, his sixteen works of fiction include Midnight’s Children – for which he won the Booker Prize in 1981, the Booker of Bookers on the 25th anniversary of the prize and Best of the Booker on the 40th anniversary – Shame, The Satanic Verses, Quichotte and Victory City. His latest book, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder was a number one Sunday Times bestseller. A former president of PEN American Center, Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for services to literature and was made a Companion of Honour in the Queen's last Birthday Honours list in 2022.

Salman Rushdie

Salman Khan is the founder and CEO of Khan Academy, a nonprofit with the mission of providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. His lessons on YouTube have revolutionized learning, garnering billions of views globally. Recognized as one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the World, Khan is also the founder of schoolhouse.world, Khan Lab School, and Khan World School, and the author of The One World Schoolhouse. He holds three degrees from MIT and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Salman Khan

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In celebration of Penguin's 80th birthday, this box set of the 80 books in the Little Black Classics series showcases the many wonderful and varied writers in Penguin Black Classics. From India to Greece, Denmark to Iran, and not forgetting Britain, this assortment of books will transport readers back in time to the furthest corners of the globe. With a choice of fiction, poetry, essays and maxims, by the likes of Chekhov, Balzac, Ovid, Austen, Sappho and Dante, it won't be difficult to find a book to suit your mood.

Little Black Classics Box Set

Oscar Wilde

'He was not blind to the fact that murder, like the religions of the Pagan world, requires a victim as well as a priest...' 
 
Wilde's supremely witty tale of dandies, anarchists and a murderous prophecy in London high society. 
 
Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. 
 
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900). Wilde's works available in Penguin Classics are De Profundis and Other Prison Writings, The Complete Short Fiction, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays, The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Soul of Man Under Socialism and Selected Critical Prose.

Lord Arthur Savile's Crime

Hafez

'Drunk or sober, king or soldier, none will be excluded' 
 
Sensual, profound, delighted, wise, Hafez's poems have enchanted their readers for more than 600 years. One of the greatest figures of world literature, he remains today the most popular poet in modern Iran. 
 
Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. 
 
Rumi (1207-73). Rumi's Selected Poems is available in Penguin Classics.

The Nightingales are Drunk

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

'I could see that she was still terribly afraid, but I didn't soften anything; instead, seeing that she was afraid I deliberately intensified it.' 
 
In this short story, Dostoyevsky masterfully depicts desperation, greed, manipulation and suicide. 
 
Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. 
 
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881). Dostoyevsky's works available in Penguin Classics are Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Double, The Gambler and Other Stories, The Grand Inquisitor, Notes From The Underground, Netochka Nezvanova, The House of The Dead, The Brothers Karamazov and The Village of Stepanchikovo.

The Meek One

Anton Chekhov

"Oh, good God," he kept saying with great relish. "Good God..." 
 
'Gooseberries' is accompanied here by 'The Kiss' and 'The Two Volodyas' - three exquisite depictions of love and loss in nineteenth-century Russia by Chekhov, the great master of the short story form. 
 
Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. 
 
Anton Chekhov (1860-1904). Chekhov's works available in Penguin Classics are The Steppe and Other Stories, Ward No. 6 and Other Stories, The Lady with the Little Dog and Other Stories, The Shooting Party, Plays and A Life in Letters.

Gooseberries

Emily Brontë

'... ever-present, phantom thing; 
My slave, my comrade, and my king' 
 
Some of Emily Brontë's most extraordinary poems 
 
Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. 
 
Emily Brontë (1818-1848). Brontë's Wuthering Heights and The Complete Poems are available in Penguin Classics

The Night is Darkening Round Me

Karl Marx

Friedrich Engels

'The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.' 
 
Marx and Engels's revolutionary summons to the working classes - one of the most important and influential political theories ever formulated. 
 
Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. 
 
Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895). Marx's works available in Penguin Classics are Capital, Dispatches for the New York Tribune, Early Writings, Grundrisse, The Portable Karl Marx and Revolution and War.

The Communist Manifesto

Friedrich Nietzsche

'We must learn to love, learn to be kind, and this from our earliest youth ... Likewise, hatred must be learned and nurtured, if one wishes to become a proficient hater' 
 
This volume contains a selection of Nietzsche's brilliant and challenging aphorisms, examining the pleasures of revenge, the falsity of pity, and the incompatibility of marriage with the philosophical life. 
 
Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. 
 
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). Nietzsche's works available in Penguin Classics are A Nietzsche Reader, Beyond Good and Evil, Ecce Homo, Human, All Too Human, On the Genealogy of Morals, The Birth of Tragedy, The Portable Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Twilight of Idols and Anti-Christ.

Aphorisms on Love and Hate

Homer

'You must be Odysseus, man of twists and turns...' 
 
The tales of Odysseus's struggle with a man-eating Cyclops and Circe, the beautiful enchantress who turns men into swine. 
 
Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. 
 
Next to nothing is known about Homer's life. His works available in Penguin Classics are The Homeric Hymns, The Iliad and The Odyssey.

Circe and the Cyclops

Samuel Pepys

'With one's face in the wind you were almost burned with a shower of Firedrops' 
 
A selection from Pepys' startlingly vivid and candid diary, including his famous account of the Great Fire 
 
Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. 
 
Samuel Pepys (1633-1703). The Diary of Samuel Pepys: A Selection is available in Penguin Classics

The Great Fire of London

Ryunosuke Akutagawa

'What is the life of a human being - a drop of dew, a flash of lightning? This is so sad, so sad.' 
 
Autobiographical stories from one of Japan's masters of modernist story-telling. 
 
Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. 
 
Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927). Akutagawa's Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories is also available in Penguin Classics.

The Life of a Stupid Man

Edgar Allan Poe

'Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was a groan of mortal terror ... the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul.' 
 
Stories about murder, mystery and madness, portraying the author's feverish imagination at its creative height. 
 
Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. 
 
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849). Poe's works available in Penguin Classics are The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings, The Masque of the Red Death, The Murders in the Rue Morgue and Other Tales, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Portable Edgar Allan Poe and The Science Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe.

The Tell-Tale Heart

Ovid

'Drawn on by his eagerness for the open sky, he left his guide and soared upwards...' 
 
Ovid tells the tales of Theseus and the Minotaur, Daedalus and Icarus, the Calydonian Boar-Hunt, and many other famous myths. 
 
Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. 
 
Ovid (c.43 BCE-17 CE). Ovid's other works available in Penguin Classics are The Erotic Poems, Fasti, Heroides and Metamorphoses.

The Fall of Icarus

Jonathan Swift

'... a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food...' 
 
Swift's devastating short satire on how to solve a famine 
 
Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. 
 
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745). Swift's works available in Penguin Classics are Gulliver's Travels and A Modest Proposal and Other Writings.

A Modest Proposal

Baltasar Gracián

'Better mad with the crowd than sane all alone' 
 
In these witty, Machiavellian aphorisms, unlikely Spanish priest Baltasar Gracián shows us how to exploit friends and enemies alike to thrive in a world of deception and illusion. 
 
Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. 
 
Baltasar Gracián (1601-1658). Gracián's work is available in Penguin Classics in The Pocket Oracle and Art of Prudence.

How to Use Your Enemies

Guy de Maupassant

A selection of Maupassant's brilliant, glittering stories set in the Parisian beau monde and Normandy countryside. 
 
Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. 
 
Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893). Maupassant's works available in Penguin Classics are A Parisian Affair and Other Stories, Bel-Ami and Pierre and Jean.

Femme Fatale

Leo Tolstoy

Although he feared death, he could not stop. 'If I stopped now, after coming all this way - well, they'd call me an idiot!'

How Much Land Does A Man Need?

He is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, hieroglyphics; exhibiting in his solutions of each a degree of acumen which appears to the ordinary apprehension praeternatural.

A Modern Detective

Virginia Woolf

'Things are not simple but complex. If he bit Mr. Browning he bit her too. Hatred is not hatred; hatred is also love.' 
 
Virginia Woolf's delightful biography of the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning's spaniel, which asks what it means to be human - and to be dog. 
 
One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants.

Flush

'It would be unfair to expect other people to be as remarkable as oneself' 
 
Wilde's celebrated witticisms on the dangers of sincerity, duplicitous biographers, the stupidity of the English - and his own genius. 
 
One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants.

Only Dull People Are Brilliant at Breakfast

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

'No true Democracy has ever existed, nor ever will exist.' 
 
In this selection from The Social Contract, Rousseau asserts that a state's only legitimate political authority comes from its people. 
 
One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants.

The Body Politic

Kakuzo Okakura

'Meanwhile, let us have a sip of tea. The afternoon glow is brightening the bamboos, the fountains are bubbling with delight, the soughing of the pines is heard in our kettle.' 
 
In this charming book from 1906, Okakura explores Zen, Taoism, Tea Masters and the significance of the Japanese tea ceremony. 
 
One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants.

The Book of Tea

Mary Shelley

'I gained his secret and we were both lost for ever' 
 
Mary Shelley's dark story of a bereaved man's disturbing passion for his daughter was suppressed by her own father, and not published for over a century. 
 
One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants.

Matilda

'Once they are aroused, once they are determined, nothing on earth and nothing in heaven will make women give way; it is impossible.' 
 
A potted history of the women who pioneered feminism and changed the world. 
 
One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants.

The Suffragettes

Rainer Maria Rilke

'What matters is to live everything. Live the questions for now.' 
 
A hugely influential collection for writers and artists of all kinds, Rilke's profound and lyrical letters to a young friend advise on writing, love, sex, suffering and the nature of advice itself. 
 
One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants.

Letters to a Young Poet

Catullus

Dazzling modern lyrical poems from Catullus - by turns smutty, abusive, romantic and deeply moving. 
 
Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. 
 
Catullus (c.84-54 BCE). Catullus's The Poems is available in Penguin Classics.

I Hate and I Love

'Hate is not conquered by hate: hate is conquered by love. This is a law eternal.' 
 
Captivating aphorisms illustrating the Buddhist dhamma, or moral system. 
 
Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions.

The Dhammapada

Sappho

'Yes, we did many things, then - all 
Beautiful ...' 
 
Lyrical, powerful poems about love, sexuality, sun-soaked Greece and the gods. 
 
Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. 
 
Sappho (c.630-570 BCE). Sappho's Stung with Love is available in Penguin Classics.

Come Close

'My God! A whole minute of bliss! Is that really so little for the whole of a man's life?' 
 
A poignant tale of love and loneliness from Russia's foremost writer. 
 
One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants.

White Nights

John Polidori

‘Twilight, in these southern climates, is almost unknown; immediately the sun sets, night begins’ 
 
Danger lurks in the dead of night. Written during the infamous gathering that also produced Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, John Polidori’s short story ‘The Vampyre’ travels across countries, twists and turns through treacherous forests, and reveals the perils of staying out after dark. It is accompanied here by two other classic tales of the vampire genre, by Karl Adolf von Waschmann and Bram Stroker.

The Vampyre

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